1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a device control apparatus which controls at least one apparatus connected to a data transmission line such as a network, a device information acquiring method, and a computer-readable recording medium having instructions executable by a computer to execute the device control method. More specifically, the present invention relates to a device control apparatus which also acquires device information from an apparatus not directly connected to the network, and further controls the apparatus not directly connected to the network as well as apparatuses that are connected to the network.
2. Description of the Related Art
A related art device control system controls a device/apparatus (referred to an apparatus in the following) connected to a network as described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2007-221565.
However, there is a problem in that the related art device control system cannot control an apparatus that is not directly connected (referred to as a local apparatus in the following) to the network.
The apparatus called “local apparatus” here is, for example, a printer or a scanner to be connected to an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer (PC) via a Universal Serial Bus (USB) cable or a data transmission line (local connection).
The problem described above can be reduced by using the PC connected to the local apparatus as a network-device control apparatus for controlling apparatuses connected to the network as described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2000-293465.
For example, by providing a PC connected to a local apparatus with a function of a print server PC (e.g., a NetWare (registered trademark) server of Novell Inc.), information (referred to as ‘apparatus information’) with respect to the apparatus including status information can be acquired from a printer by the function of the print server (via the print server software).
However, there is a problem in that the related arts described above cannot acquire the apparatus information from the apparatus not directly connected to the network without installing specific software such as print server software.
In other words, even if the local apparatus is connected to the PC via the device control apparatus via the network, the device control apparatus cannot acquire the apparatus information from the local apparatus if the PC does not perform the function of the print server (referred to as print server function).